


Ripples

by KiroAngel



Category: Doctor Strange (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Reality, Danni is a badass, Gen, Healing, Metaphysics, Read, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2273820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiroAngel/pseuds/KiroAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danni falls off a curb and into an alley in Manhattan, in a dimension filled with superheroes and super villains. Armed with nothing, no one, and not technically existing, she manages to stumble her way into the lives of a few of her childhood heroes. Her life and theirs will never be the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ripples

**Author's Note:**

> This is a pet project of mine. I've kept a little notebook glued to my side for the last several months writing this, by myself, no coauthor this time. I hope you love it as much as I have loved writing it so far.
> 
> This is a work in progress, so I would absolutely love if you guys gave me some feedback. It doesn't matter if you hated the character, you think it would be awesome if I did this one thing, or you want me to speed up Wade's entrance, just let me know. I would love to have some nice conversations with you.
> 
> Also, especially I would like to see what you think of the Danni/everyone else interactions. You think I should pair her with someone in particular? Let me know, and tell me why. Pleaaaaaase.
> 
> I should also mention that the Wade/OC ship is just flirting and doesn't come in for a while. Actually, all the ships listed are barely mentioned, but hey, it got you here, didn't it?
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy the show!
> 
> ~Kiro

Danni woke slowly, the pounding pain in her head rousing her to wakefulness. She wrinkled her nose at the smell- some mix of sulphur, smog, rotting garbage, and piss. The hard pavement beneath her hands was gritty, digging into her hip and shoulder. With a groan, she blinked open her eyes and rolled into a sitting position. She tugged a hand through her cropped brown hair, then winced as she met a lump.

 

Cars ground past the entrance to the alleyway, and every so often a loud honk echoed through the space. She appeared to be in the narrow space between two many-story buildings, sitting in the dirt across from a dumpster. Her head was pounding and when Danni lifted a hand to touch where it hurt, it felt hot and swollen. She hoped she didn't have a concussion. That would be bad.

 

Danni pushed herself to her feet and brushed the grime off her black jeans and button down, patting down her pockets to make sure she hadn't lost anything. iPhone, check, chapstick, check, wallet, rings, pens, notepad, sunglasses, check to all, although the sunglasses appeared to have cracked when she hit her head. The hinge was broken. Hell.

 

Not that this was the worst thing about her current situation. The fact that she woke up in an alleyway of a big city with no recollection of anything but an odd swirling feeling and the urge to puke- that was probably the worst thing. Danni looked around for her school bag and found it piled up against the wall of one of the buildings, seemingly unharmed. Good. At least she had a couple comic books to keep her company.

 

Danni slung the messenger bag over her shoulder, then slipped out her phone and started tapping away. No signal. Fuck. How could she be in the center of a city and have no signal? More to the point, where the fuck was she, what the fuck happened, and how was she going to get home? Suppressing the urge to hyperventilate, she stuffed her phone back into her pocket and hesitantly made her way to the entrance to the alleyway.

 

The street was packed with cars and people, all looking like they had somewhere to be. The street sign designated this as nowhere she had ever heard of- this wasn't Denver. There were too many buildings in every direction. She looked up, trying to find the end of them and- pulled up short. There, a few blocks away, was a modern tower. Pasted on the side was one massive letter, a painfully familiar logo. The Avengers logo.

 

Danni ducked back into the alleyway, wrapping her arms around herself. Avengers tower. Maybe she was hallucinating? This was something she would hallucinate. Life would just live to play tricks on her like this. Fuckfuckfuck. What if she wasn't hallucinating? She pulled the sleeve up the arm that had not hit the pavement and bit the inside, hard. Pain. She wasn't dreaming. Maybe.

 

Hell. No matter what had actually happened, she needed to treat this like it was real. A real situation. She was in a city with Avengers tower looking over it. Obviously, she was in New York. Assuming she was in the same time, depending on where she was in the series and if it was movie or comic verse... anything could be happening.

 

Danni tried to calm herself down. What did she know about Marvel? That it was attacked regularly by nearly unstoppable forces, often with many casualties. Not helping. Right. What was applicable to her?

 

She was in New York, hundreds if not thousands of miles away from her home town of Thornton, Colorado. It was a completely different universe, unless some geek had decided to ignore Marvel's copyright and build Avengers Tower in the middle of Manhattan. She thought it was Manhattan. She could never get NY straight.

 

The Stark family existed. Judging by her sudden transport here, so did magic or magical events. She needed more informations. Had the Avengers formed? Was this the same universe she had grown up reading comics and watching movies for? Where was her family? She resolved to find out.

 

~

 

Three hours later found Danni in a library, staring at a computer screen, trying not to cry. Yes, the Avengers existed. Well, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Phil Coulson, and Steve Rogers and existed. The only records of the Avengers were the reports and footage of the Chitauri attack on New York. 

 

Danika "Danni" Hadacek did not exist. After several cursory google searches, it was determined that her mother had died at the age of 21 in a car crash with her first husband. Her father was still alive, but had presumably never married her mother. Danni's siblings did not exist, save for the half-siblings she rarely saw because they were twenty years older than her and lived in Tennessee. All in all, her family was a bust.

 

Danni had managed to find out why her phone wasn't working. Apple didn't exist here. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had presumably been hired into Stark Industries early in their career. So, Apple was incompatible with Stark technologies. Wonderful.

 

Where did that leave Danni exactly? Staring blankly at the computer screen, trying not to start weeping in the middle of a public place. She sniffed, wiped her eyes, and held it together long enough to make one last search, snapping a picture of the results with her phone. Then, she stumbled to the restroom, determined to get over her panic attack slash mourning session away from the public eye.

 

~

 

The sky was beginning to darken and the lights had come on overhead as Danni picked her way over the sidewalk. She hoped that she would be received, hell, that she could even find the place. All she had to go on were keen observational skills and a lifetime of way too many psychic classes.

 

She drudged down the sidewalk, making sure to measure each building she passed carefully. She figured that when she passed it she would immediately dismiss it as not the one. Danni had already been through half the neighborhood and was almost ready to bag it and look for some bench to sleep on and hope she wasn't stabbed in the night. She was freezing, though whether that was the air being legitimately cold or the fact she hadn't eaten in over 24 hours, she didn't know. She was also getting more and more anxious that this building was he one and she wouldn't know it. Then, the gnawing in her gut skipped a house. She was almost all the way past the building when she realized that the feeling was what she had been looking for.

 

Danni walked backwards a few paces, studying the building she had nearly skipped. It looked just like any other building on the block, grey and nondescript. Biting her lip, she stepped towards it, knocking on the door. There was silence for a long moment and she shifted, hoping some hillbilly with a gun wasn't going to come out and yell at her. Wait, no, this was New York. They didn't have yokels.

 

At long last, the door opened to show a bald man of seemingly Asian descent, looking none too welcoming. He wore bright green robes and seemed to be trying to figure out how I had gotten there. "Yes?"

 

"Hi. Sorry to disturb you, but is Steph- is Doctor Strange free right now? I know he's probably busy, but I kind of need to talk to him..." Wong looked me over, measuring my scuffed clothes and lost look. "I don't mean any harm, either, I just..."

 

"What is it that brings you here?" Danni shifted.

 

"I'm kind of... from a different dimension. I think. And I have no idea how I got here of how to get home." Wong hesitated a beat before motioning me inside, moving for the hallway.

 

"I will tell him you are here. Do not touch anything." I nodded and clasped my hands around the strap of my bag, palms sweating. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

 

A few minutes later, Wong came back and led Danni through the halls, passing doors and artifacts that she suspected would lead to some nasty surprises if she touched them or tried to go in. He opened one door that looked much like every other and motioned her in.

 

Stephen Strange was floating, cross-legged, above the carpet in the center of his study, tea cup in one hand, the other levitating a book and teapot in front of him. His eyes were focused on the text, and Danni felt something warm wash over her at the sight. It fell away as the door latched behind her and Stephen looked up.

 

"Hello."

 

Danni shifted, trying to decide how to approach this. "Hello, Dr. Strange. I wished to speak to you, ask for your help." He set his tea aside, leaving it floating by his side.

 

"So it would appear. Please, tell me your name and your problem."

 

Danni took a breath and decided to start from the beginning. "My name is Danika Hadacek, I'm sixteen, and up until five hours ago lived in Denver, Colorado, in a dimension where you and various other aspects of this reality only exist as comic books. I have no idea how I got here, but now I'm stuck without any resources."

 

Stephen listened calmly, watching her expressions and mannerisms. "How did you know to come here?" She shrugged, hands still clutching at the strap of her bag.

 

"I read a lot of comics, and to be honest you were always my favorite character, though you tended to be off the beaten track. The comics talk a lot about your trips to other dimensions, so I figured you would understand and maybe be able to help. That and by process of elimination- you're the only person that I both am familiar with and have access to, although I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get through your wards at first."

 

Stephen seemed to take interest in this. "You say that various aspects of this reality exist in yours as comic books?" She nodded.

 

"Stark Industries, for instance, doesn't exist in my reality except in fiction, as the company of Tony Stark aka Iron Man. SHIELD is a fictional organization, the Avengers, and various other masked heroes. I'm sure you know Danny Rand, and he's just as fictional as you are." She winced, not really meaning to call him a fake. "It's just that where I'm from magic and superheroes don't actually exist."

 

"And this is the only medium of fiction that you have seen to be real in this reality?" Danni thought for a moment.

 

"Yeah, I think so. It's all Marvel comic book stuff. Marvel is one of two major companies that dominate the comic industry." Stephen nodded. "Do you think you'll be able to bet me back?" she asked, not very hopefully. She knew how this always worked out in the stories.

 

Stephen did not give a straight answer. "Perhaps if you would tell me what you remember about your trip here, I could gather a greater understanding of the situation."

 

Danni sighed and launched into a total recount of the events which had lead her there. "I was walking to my car after school to drive home. I hadn't done anything odd, no one was following me. I was out late because of my college class, which runs half an hour later than the others, and no one was around. It started sprinkling, and I stepped off the sidewalk and..." She trailed off, her memory getting fuzzy. "There was a spinning, falling sensation, and I felt sick. Then I woke up with a goose egg the size of Alaska in a New York alleyway. I saw the Avengers Tower and that's when I first suspected I wasn't in the right dimension."

 

"And you came directly here?" She shook her head.

 

"I tried looking it up on my phone-" she held up the offending piece of technology, "-but it won't work with Stark cell towers. So I walked to the nearest library and searched the Internet there. I don't exist here. My family doesn't, either."

 

Stephen took another long sip of his tea, contemplating the situation for a moment. "I will search my tomes for an answer to the mystery. In the mean time, you may stay in one of the spare rooms of the Sanctum." Danni nodded and smiled tentatively.

 

"Thank you, Dr. Strange. I really have no clue what I would have done..." she trailed off. "If you want, I'm pretty decent with a few healing modalities. I'd be happy to work on you tomorrow, if you like. I mean, I know you're probably more than capable of healing yourself, but everyone needs a little help now and then."

 

"What sorts of healing modalities do you practice?" The sorcerer seemed curious, watching Danni intently.

 

"Well I don't actually know if you have them here, but I've studied Reki, Magnified Healing, Matrix Energetics, Access Consciousness, and I'm sure I'm missing a couple..." Stephen raised an eyebrow.

 

"All of this by the age of sixteen?" Danni blushed slightly and nodded.

 

"Well, my parents are huge metaphysical nuts, and I love learning. I've been taking classes since I was nine, and I learn something new every day." Stephen nodded and looked her over.

 

"Your aura is quite powerful. Otherwise you would not have been able to find and enter the Sanctum." Danni smiled shyly.

 

"Thank you. Anyway, I would love to work on you, if you'd let me. I feel like it's the most I could do." Stephen unfolded his legs, ceasing to levitate and coming to stand on the floor.

 

"Perhaps I will take you up on the offer. For now, I believe that Wong has prepared food for us." Danni smiled, face flushed.

 

"Thanks. I'm starting to feel a bit faint, and that's never a good sign." Stephen lead her to a dining room where Wong had set up a simple meal. They ate in silence, and afterward Wong led Danni to a spare room. Stephen wandered off, presumably to start in on his research.

 

The room which Wong led her to was simple: a bed and wardrobe, no other accoutrements. The door shut behind her and she sighed, flopping onto the full-sized mattress. She shoved a sob to the back of her throat and curled up, focusing on her plans for the next day. Some hour later, she was finally carried into sleep by thoughts of collapsible bows and the dangers of knowing insider information.


End file.
